Journalist Who Brought Down Gen. McChrystal Dies In Car Accident

Editor’s note: Journalists who mess with government and military power often die under mysterious circumstances.

Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33.

Hastings’ unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone, “The Runaway General,” captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and the general resigning his post. “The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be met by – set by a commanding general,” Obama said, announcing McChrystal’s departure. “It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system.”

Hastings’ hallmark as reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power. While other embedded reporters were charmed by McChrystal’s bad-boy bravado and might have excused his insubordination as a joke, Hastings was determined to expose the recklessness of a man leading what Hastings believed to be a reckless war. “Runaway General” was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, won the 2010 Polk award for magazine reporting, and was the basis for Hastings’ book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan.

From the description on the Youtube.com video below: “One woman in the area described it sounding ‘like a bomb went off in the middle of the night’ & a man said ‘I couldn’t have written a scene like this in a movie’ with the engine flying 50-60 yards from the car.”

Wikileaks claims that hours before the death of Hastings, he contacted a lawyer of WikiLeaks and informed them that he is being investigated by the FBI. The same was tweeted by the Wikileak, FBI is yet to respond